


He Can Only Love Her

by charleybradburies



Category: Agent Carter (TV), Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Canon Disabled Character, Character Analysis, Character Study, Community: 1_million_words, Community: Towerparty, Disabled Character, Emotional Hurt, Espionage, F/M, Family, Father-Son Relationship, Grandparents & Grandchildren, Hurt No Comfort, I Don't Even Know, I Made Myself Cry, I Will Go Down With This Ship, Internal Conflict, Love, Metafiction, Not A Fix-It, Not Actually Unrequited Love, POV Male Character, Season/Series 01, Spies & Secret Agents, Unrequited Love, What Was I Thinking?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-03
Updated: 2015-09-03
Packaged: 2018-04-18 19:28:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 835
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4717736
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/charleybradburies/pseuds/charleybradburies
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p></p><div class="center">
  <p><br/><i>Love, knowing that dear image to be his,</i><br/><i>Woke up within the sick heart sorrow-bow'd,</i><br/><i>Unto the sighs which are its weary load</i><br/><i>Saying, "Go forth."</i><br/>(from Dante's "The New Life" tr. Dante Gabriel Rosetti)<br/>For TowerParty | Lightning Round: Hurt/Comfort</p>
</div>
            </blockquote>





	He Can Only Love Her

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!! Comments, etc. are greatly appreciated! xx

_Dad was wrong._

He’s still sitting at his desk when he thinks it, and it’s both surprising and tragic that it’s this realization that truly turns the moment sour. 

“I knew I loved your mama because my heart sang when it was around hers,” Daniel’s father had told him innumerable times, recounting again and again the stories of his own youth at his son’s request. Daniel had grown up having very little of his late mother, but through his own blood, the family’s photos, and his father’s stories, he was seldom for want of knowledge of her, nor of the image of a man like one he wanted to be. _A truly good man._

But his grandmother had warned him that the better a man is, the more he hurts - that men, in their typical, avoidant fashion, chose the wrong paths in order to avoid that hurt. _Good men live in sadness and love in sorrow,_ she’d said, so many times, and he’d deliberately tried to ignore such warnings...only to learn now that it was wisdom he really should have heeded. 

Peggy was a traitor. She was aiding Stark and whoever else; she was purposely hindering the SSR’s investigation, actively and knowingly breaking the law. She’d taken advantage of the assumptions their co-workers had put on her to escape their eyes and their suspicion; she’d told the “boys” to “play nice” and gone and put one man in the hospital with a stapler to the head and numerous others in the morgue - maybe even one of their own. Her reputation had preceded her smile, and Daniel hadn’t particularly cared.

_No girl’s gonna trade a red, white, and blue shield for an aluminum crutch._

He’d known Krzeminski was right, and still he’d been foolish enough to let himself hope that maybe… _God,_ how could he be so negligent, so stupid?

 _It doesn’t even matter anymore,_ he realizes, when she walks back into the room, and he can’t help but glance over at her - not half as obviously as most of the others usually did, because he tried to actually treat people with some respect, for God’s sake. At some point she meets his eyes and smiles and his stomach turns on him, but she only looks for a second before turning away again, leaving him to gather half a thought, most of which consists of noticing that his chest is only growing heavier. It was so damned _pointless_ to be mourning something that never could have been in the first place, but he’s gone through mourning before, through grief and sorrow and loss, and he knows that’s what’s happening. 

It’s so horrible of him, because he really _should_ care more about her betraying the _country_ and every _other_ damn citizen of the US, every other damn soldier, but no - he’s thinking about she probably leaves the office each night and goes back to some ritzy apartment and kisses Howard Stark and it hurts a hell of a lot more that he feels like she’s betraying _him_. Which is ridiculous, because what’s going on for him is obviously not mutual and she probably doesn’t have the slightest clue that it’s even happening. Not that she’d act differently if she did.

He’s too deep in thought to realize she’s talking to him until she’s standing by his desk asking if he’s alright, and he just barely manages to give an almost-convincing affirmation before she decides against pressing harder and bids him good night. He makes sure to turn his gaze toward the floor as she turns to walks out; his peripheral vision catches her legs, especially because of the heels, and she does walk a bit less sturdily at the days’ ends, but no one could accuse him of staring at her. If it were appropriate, well, he certainly would, but it isn’t, and while he doesn’t normally put so much thought into how he addresses her, tonight calls for it. Because if he _didn’t_ stop himself, he’d overreact as he so often does; he’d cry out in some form of madness, though he doesn’t know that it’d even be anger, perhaps just...sorrow. 

She smiles at him and he _knows_ just how badly he wants to see her smile more, smile unabashedly, smile _for him_ and _away from work_ and _in his bed_ , because he’s filled with the aching of it. But this last smile of the night, even though he knows it’ll only just hold him till the following morning, can’t be genuine, not with all this over their shoulders. 

The door closes behind her, and he’s one of the last men in the office, and he can’t help feeling like he just might cry when he actually is the only one left. There’s no way he’s letting someone that doesn’t need to see what conclusions he’s come to. 

Because Peggy Carter is a traitor. 

And he loves her anyway. 

And he knows, because he’s a good man, and his heart is _sick_ with sorrow.


End file.
